Plate joinery permits accurate and secure attachment of workpieces connected at a joint. Typical plate joinery requires a device for making a plunge cut or kerf in a joint surface designed for receipt of a plate (also called a biscuit, wafer, or spline) of wood or other material. Oppositely disposed grooves are cut into each piece of wood to be joined. Then glue and a plate is placed within each groove, and the plates are allowed to expand from application of the glue. The expansion of the glued biscuit in the opposing cuts provides an accurate, strong woodworking joint. Accordingly, plate joinery provides a strong, simple, and relatively long lasting joint for use in the field of woodworking.
Known plate joiner devices are generally comprised of a housing, a motor unit and a rotating blade section. A portion of the housing contacts a joint surface and the rotating blade section is then operably moved toward and engages a portion of the joint surface at the location of the desired cut. The rotating blade then cuts into the joint surface and is retracted. A particular advantage of plate joinery over other joint forming methods is the ease of use, aesthetic result, and overall efficiency.
However, proper plate joinery requires precision cuts of predetermined angle and location in the corresponding workpieces. Improper placement and angle orientation of a blade section of a plate joiner device with respect to a workpiece surface may result in misalignment between joint surfaces and outer surfaces in opposing workpieces. Such misalignment is a problem which is most prevalent when connecting mitered carcase joints with plunge cut locations measured from an inner workpiece surface, rather than an outer workpiece surface. Although prior art plate joiners may be capable of referencing the location of a plunge cut into a mitered carcase joint surface from an outside workpiece surface, no prior art devices provide means for securely engaging the mitered portion of carcase workpieces or for referencing from the outside workpiece surface the angle of the plunge cut with respect to the joint surface. This is important because proper orientation of plunge cuts in carcase mitered joint surfaces determines alignment quality of the joint surfaces.
What has been needed, therefore, has been a plate joiner having miter guide means for securely engaging the mitered portion of carcase workpieces and for accurately and reliably locating plunge cuts perpendicularly into opposing mitered carcase joint surfaces so that, when a joint is glued together with a plate in opposing plunge cuts, a closed joint having matching outside carcase surfaces is formed, independent of workpiece thickness.